A Korean-Chinese boy, a soccer ball, and fourteen minutes that'll wreck you.
Eleven, which played at the 2001 Venice Film Festival, is the first short film of director Zhang Lu. He is a forty-year-old writer whose works engage with issues of cultural difference stemming from his own background as a member of the Korean cultural minority in China. Eleven is a fourteen-minute long vignette, virtually silent, of an eleven-year-old boy's encounter with a group of soccer players his own age.
Direction
Zhang Lu's debut: silence as scream.
Cinematography
Every frame aches with loneliness.
Director
Zhang Lu
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Zhang Lu drew from his own experience as a Joseonjok (ethnic Korean in China), making this semi-autobiographical.
The Venice premiere launched Zhang's career pivot from novelist to acclaimed arthouse director.
CN
